Another way I sought to inspire my students was to encourage collaborations. When I was learning to play guitar as a teenager, I always had other friends who were into music, and we jammed all the time. I didn’t understand how special this was until years later. When I started teaching music, I realized that many students don’t have the opportunity to play with other musicians. 

With this in mind, I encouraged my students to take part in a musical collaboration for the concert. These collaborations took many forms, from a family band, to guitar and piano duet, a couple of rock bands, and more. The students who worked as collaborators made great progress—without exception. As an example, our two student rock bands both had around six weeks of rehearsal, once a week for 1½ hours each time. The first rehearsals were shaky for both groups. We started by learning a single riff from one of the songs we were working on, and then worked on playing it as a group for as long as we could before it fell apart. Sometimes we’d be able to go for a couple of minutes, other times it would fall apart after a few seconds.

After a few weeks of rehearsal, things started to come together. Everyone started to feel a bit more confident, and were listening to each other more. Band members got better at playing through mistakes, and we started playing through whole songs.

After a few more rehearsals, students started to make the songs their own. We started adding more elements, like guitar solos and saxophone on some songs. 

The band members were also getting more comfortable with each other, as everyone got to know each other. 

When the big day arrived, I was amazed by the progress everyone had made in six weeks. The students had all learned new skills and techniques, and had practiced enough to really perform, as can be seen and heard in these videos from the concert.